VAN (Virtual ALT.NET Meeting) Update

Zach has suggested the catchy name VAN for the online ALT.NET meetings and it’s sticking, so I’ll start calling it that now, too.

I apologize for last week. I dropped the ball at the last minute and forgot to update my blog with the fact that neither Zach nor I could host it. NOTE: A VAN is never cancelled if 2 or more people want to have one. You can always dial someone up on Skype, host your own LiveMeeting, etc. I’ll check with Zach, but I think he has the resources to set up LiveMeeting every week, even if no one hosts it. If this is OK with everyone, even when we’re not able, others can still host/participate.

Another issue is that for people in the UTC+ time zones or –8 or lower time zones, it’s hard to add attend these meetings. I don’t want to have to make anyone get up at 4AM and I don’t want to get up at 4AM, so we may see about having one for our EMEA homies and maybe something for our Pacific homies also. Any EMEA or Pacific folks want to chime in with ideas, I’m all ears.

Lastly, the next meeting is scheduled for January 7th, 2009 as the 24th is Chrismas Eve (a big holiday in the Americas and Europe) and the 1st is New Years Day. I don’t know about you folks, but I have other plans :) If anyone wants to get together on those days, let me know and I can work with Zach about getting a LiveMeeting set up for you.

Thanks for your patience as we fumble and stumble through this.

Also, Zach posted the recording of Jeremy Miller’s presentation on StoryTeller. It was a good presentation, but I was a little disappointed in the crowd participation. Online meetings are quite different from real life. We’ll have to figure out how to get move involvement when we have guest speakers like that. Anyhow, here’s the link:

About Chad Myers

Chad Myers is the Director of Development for Dovetail Software, in Austin, TX, where he leads a premiere software team building complex enterprise software products. Chad is a .NET software developer specializing in enterprise software designs and architectures. He has over 12 years of software development experience and a proven track record of Agile, test-driven project leadership using both Microsoft and open source tools. He is a community leader who speaks at the Austin .NET User's Group, the ADNUG Code Camp, and participates in various development communities and open source projects.

Were you able to actually watch the recording Chad? Previously it only had the first 8 minutes. When I reported the issue to Zach he told me to try again after he did something and now I can’t view it at all, the recording ID is incorrect.

Regarding audience participation, I think people on conf calls hesitate to interrupt because they can’t silently indicate, “When you get to a good stopping point, I have something to say.” Consider using LiveMeeting’s feature that lets you change your seat color, as a way of virtually raising your hand.